


AO3, Fandom, and Money

by Franzeska



Series: March Meta Matters [20]
Category: Fandom - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 15:32:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 3,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23238511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Franzeska/pseuds/Franzeska
Summary: Collected tumblr meta on fandom and profit
Series: March Meta Matters [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1664836
Kudos: 3
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	1. AO3's fandom tradition

**Author's Note:**

> Uploaded for day 20 of the March Meta Matters Challenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: October 1, 2016.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/151222340919/psa-dont-mention-commissionspatreon-on-ao3
> 
> This grew out of a PSA about not putting ads on AO3.

> Fwiw, in my experience, they warn you and ask you to take down the link before they suspend or ban.  
  
But it’s still bullshit. AO3 is the main fanfic hub right now, and it’s preventing fanfic writers from making money off their fic the way fanartists do. We can’t even ask for donations. Hundreds of non-profit organizations allow their users to make money. Non-profit doesn’t mean no income, it means no profit. And as a user of the site, you aren’t part of the non profit, you aren’t registered with your home country as a nonprofit. You’re not a member of AO3 anymore than you’re an employee of Tumblr for using this site. There is no legal basis whatsoever for what they are saying. 

AO3 comes out of a fandom tradition where making money off of fic is absolutely taboo. Charging for a zine or physical piece of art is one thing: there are significant production costs aside from the creator’s time. Asking to be paid just because you write fic is socially unacceptable in the extreme. Yes, there are segments of Tumblr that feel differently. You guys are welcome to found your own archive based on your own mores.

There _are_ commercial fair uses, but the thrust of OTW’s legal argument is that fanworks, in general, are not intended to replace the market for the original. AO3 being strictly anti-profit, anti-commercialization is a cornerstone of that argument.

Some of what people want to advertise is original writing. There’s no legal issue with selling that, but why should AO3 give advertising space for it? OTW has limited resources that are intended to be for the support of _fanworks_. “Original slash” and other types of original writing that the writer nonetheless sees as part of the fannish community and posts to AO3 for free are one thing. (And, believe me, we had a knock down, drag out argument about whether they belonged at all.) Commercial ebooks available through Amazon and art in Etsy shops are not things that need preservation and protection by OTW. Allowing advertising links would only make AO3 turn into a den of spam. It’s better to take a hardline stance.


	2. Non-profit, Racism, Misogyny, Homophobia and Rampant Rape and Abuse Apologism

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: October 2, 2016.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/151261545664/good-to-see-you-defend-the-good-old-things-in
> 
> Obviously a response to the previous chapter's post. This kind of shit is dead standard on Tumblr.

> Anonymous asked: Good to see you defend the good old things in fandom such as non-profit, racism, misogyny, homophobia and rampant rape and abuse apologism. Why is it that fandom never gets to be safe unless you're a straight, white cis woman and that you always act like everyone else just have to sit down, shut up and tolerate how things are run. That we have no right to a voice or an opinion? Because if we speak, we "make you scared of writing things".

One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn’t belooooong. ♪♫

In an era when “abuse apologism” means shipping some Voltron pairing where one of them is in their “late teens”, “rape apologism” means writing sex pollen fic, “homophobia” and “misogyny” are the two sides of the hero/male sidekick vs. hero/female love interest shipwar, and “racism” means focusing more on Poe than on Finn in your stormpilot, it’s important that someone be willing to speak up.

Tumblr is full of fans who can tick off every minority ticky box imaginable but who are still afraid to squee about their ships in public because anonymous assholes will flip out at them for shipping wrong.

I got into fandom when I was 13. It helped me discover my sexuality, and it’s been an important part of my life for over 20 years. I am all for young people getting into fandom if they want to. However, the thing that made fandom so great for me was that older fans were willing to mentor me and tell me what fandom was like in the past. They didn’t tell me I had to do fandom exactly their way, and I’m not here to force people into my way of doing things either. There’s a whole internet out there to play in. If you never want to see a word out of me again, you don’t have to. If AO3′s rules bug you, you are free to found your own archive based on purity principles instead of on inclusiveness.

Fandom is never completely safe, no matter what your demographic. But it can be fun and pleasant instead of a cesspit of hate. The way to make that happen is to ship and let ship and to assume good faith. The way to do that is to promote the things you do like in fandom instead of trying to set fire to the things you don’t.

When I get an anon message like yours, I usually ignore it because it’s so transparently obvious that you aren’t reacting to me. I can be abrasive: there’s plenty to criticize about actual me. But when I get accused of not making fanworks about characters of color or, as in your case, when I get accused of being straight, I know that person is simply stringing together Tumblr’s favorite insults.

Adding “non-profit” to a list of generic badness makes it clear that you’re just angry that AO3 is refusing to compromise its principles and mission to cater to your need for attention. Be more subtle in your trolling next time.


	3. Filing Off The Serial Numbers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: June 28, 2017.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/162352864919/psa-dont-mention-commissionspatreon-on-ao3
> 
> That really famous post _'psa: don’t mention commissions/patreon on AO3'_ led to a discussion of fans turning pro.

People have been filing off the serial numbers forever and in large numbers. I feel like we forget that every few years and find it astonishing how many fans have turned pro and how many pro works have fanfic-y roots.

Most of the gay romance novels I read in the 90s that had plots besides sex turned out to be old slash zine fic with the names changed. Of course, a lot of it was so hugely AU in the first place that you’d have to know the fandom and fanon well to guess which characters the leads were based off of. These days, many romance ebooks of every gender combo are kind of obviously fic if you’re familiar with the fanon versions of the characters they’re based on.

Sometimes, it’s less obvious, like in that historical romance about an Elizabethan government agent going on a deep cover mission and falling in love with the queen of thieves… But if you’re familiar with slash fandoms of the 80s, it’s super obvious what pairing morphed into this het romance novel. If you’re not, no amount of googling the plot elements is going to clue you in. (Maybe if the book had obsessed about unibrows as much as it did about blue eyes…)

It has always been fine to file the serial numbers off or be loosely inspired and sell your non-infringing original work.

Selling your fic is an iffy proposition and tends to lead to people sending you C&Ds, though some rights holders send them anyway.

However, whether for fic or original writing, legal or illegal or murky selling practices, **commercial advertisement has always been banned from AO3. **Yes, there are good legal reasons for this and good fandom history reasons for this, but what it boils down to is that AO3 can make whatever rules it wants. Users are free to take their business elsewhere if they don’t like them.


	4. Merely being commercial doesn't make a site suck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted November 24, 2018.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/180463719869/yahoo-reports-big-loss-writes-down-tumblr-value
> 
> In the wake of account deletions, tumblr was discussing Yahoo=Death and other such topics. We revived an older post prophesying the end of tumblr fandom.

A good post to revive!

I don’t think it’s the commercial nature of a site by itself that’s the issue. DW never really took off like a lot of us hoped and never created that second era of LJ-style fandom, but it has been chugging happily along ever since. Its ambitions were modest and its business plan sound.

The problem is that most commercial sites are venture capital startup nonsense that does not have a clear business plan that will be sustainable in the long run. The aim is to drive users to the site in such numbers that they feel unable to abandon it, then inflict advertising or new fees on them after they’re stuck. “We’ll figure it out later” is a key feature of all of these, but the assumption that lots of users mean lots of ways to monetize isn’t always valid.

Squidge-style sites also don’t usually have good long-term plans. (IDK about Squidge in particular though.) The ones that last are the ones run by fans with deep pockets and good offline fannish support networks. Many others die when the owner forgets to renew the domain name or gets tired of paying or _can’t_ pay any longer.

Look at the Smallville Slash Archive: it was one of many fannish sites that Minotaur hosted. When he died unexpectedly, his many fannish friends stepped in to save his work. SSA ultimately got imported to AO3 to preserve it. This worked because he had plenty of actual friends in fandom–people he saw offline at cons too–and not just casual acquaintances who followed him on social media. It’s true that donation drives can be signal boosted on social media, but all of the liking and goodwill in the world won’t do jack if nobody has access to the hosting/business side of a site to _use_ those donations to keep it open.

This is one reason a lot of older fans I know have started talking about fannish estate planning. All those paper zines are a better archival format than any computer drive, but they also often get thrown in the trash by clueless relatives. Out of an original print run of a couple hundred, how many are extant?

AO3 is distinctive in that it has an entire organization in place to make sure it continues. (So while nothing is _forever_, AO3 is about as solid as it gets.) But I’d probably trust DW second most, and I’d trust it over many single-owner not-for-profit fannish spaces.


	5. Unlimited Images = Unprofitable Site = Doom For Fandom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: January 2, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/181655827934/meyerlansky-i-have-a-lot-of-apprehension-about
> 
> In the wake of Pillowfort drama, someone was feeling alienated by all this "Let's go back to DW!" talk. Their comment is that DW is too non-visual, so saying that it's the only viable option is undervaluing a big chunk of fandom that needs "unlimited hosting capability".
> 
> My answer is that I don't control Pillowfort making shitty decisions. Alienating to artists and graphics makers or not, DW is one of the only sites with a good track record, and the presence of unlimited image hosting _itself_ is what makes sites unsafe for fandom after a time.

The issue I see is that unlimited hosting is backed by venture capital money. DW’s “safety” and its poor fit for an increasingly visual fandom landscape are inextricably tied to one another.

The only options that seem viable in the long term that don’t cap image uploads are the distributed ones that are a little too technically complicated for fandom to like.

PF has the issue that it hasn’t really accounted for how it’s going to pay once it’s big. Even aside from the TOS issue, this gives me pause.

You’re right, but it’s harder to solve than text hosting. The service we’ve come to expect is tied to the website models that screw us.

ETA: Oh, and I do see your point about who gets left behind. I think a fair amount of discussion is coming from people who felt abandoned and betrayed by fandom for the move to tumblr, a website that tries as hard as possible to screw longform text and discussion. I’ll just blather endlessly wherever we go, but a lot of LJ fandom dropped away rather than coming to tumblr. A lot of tumblr fandom won’t make it to the next platform.


	6. even if it was all fine and legal I still don’t want ads on ao3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: November 20, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189198837959/ao3-and-ads
> 
> This grew out of yet another PSA post about not putting ads on AO3.

> yeah I’ll be honest even if it was all fine and legal I still don’t want ads on ao3

Right?!

The thing that a lot of people miss is that the whole reason they want to put ads on AO3 is that AO3 is insanely successful at appealing to a certain demographic. It is _AO3_, not the individual fic that has done 90% of the work.

So why should AO3 allow them to profit off of that work?

More than that, why should AO3 allow them to profit when AO3 was paid for by donations from people who are paying to _not see ads_ and whose experience on the archive is materially harmed by ads?

It’s like if you host a dinner party, and your asshole friend tries to use it as an opportunity to sell leggings or some other shitty pyramid scheme. Not only did you do all the work to make the dinner party nice, but they’re also harming their social network by turning it into a creepy business situation.


	7. That Double Standard for Fan Art and Profit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: November 20, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189205087589/the-thing-is-people-make-and-sell-fanart-for

> Anonymous asked: The thing is, people make and sell fanart for money, and NOBODY gives them shit for this. Deviantart and storenvy and society6 etc will all slap fanart on t-shirts and tote bags and stickers no problem. Writers work just as hard as artists do, so why shouldn't we be able to turn a profit the way fanartists do? For all the good points you make about how damaging the monetization of fic could be, do none of those points apply to fanart? Why is fanart so special that it gets to be sold?

This difference is of longstanding and used to be about the fact that art was being sold as a physical copy. Fic in physical zines also got paid for to cover costs. People selling at conventions are selling physical objects, which is rather different from selling copies of digital text.

Generally, fan artists either design things that are fairly far removed from a particular IP or they eventually get their asses kicked by corporate lawyers. Fic inherently has to use more of the names and details of canon, and that can make it an easier target. I don’t think they’re especially morally different, just more and less likely to draw the wrath of lawyers.

I’ve never been very involved in fan art on a social level. The people I run into are treating it like a business, so I do as well. We’re not friends. They either make professional-quality things at the price point I want in the fandom I want, or I ignore them.

I’ve sometimes seen people talk about the difficulty of being an artist who is just starting out. There’s no audience unless you’re already fantastic, unlike with fic, where someone who is just starting out can still find readers. Whether that’s negative depends on what you want out of fan art, I suppose. Art may just inherently tend more that way because of the uncanny valley, or it could be a product of the effects of monetization on a social space.

If you want a fandom-y way to make money off of writing, the ebook romance market is booming. The tropier the better!

Plenty of fic writers do try their hand over there and make good money. It requires the usual skills of cover design, editing, marketing yourself, being able to write longer works (well, longer than the AO3 average), being able to structure a plot, etc. If you want a good editor, you have to pay them.

(How is it that I see tons of ko-fi links for fic but no one complains that betas aren’t getting paid? Back in the zine days, the zine editors were the ones theoretically making money, not that it was ever much. The authors just got paid in zine copies. This “We deserve money for our labor” thing has far-reaching implications.)

If you write casefic with first time romance, that translates well. If you write coffee shop AUs, you’ll probably have to beef up the plot and characterization because a lot of what’s fun about coffee shop AUs is how the new fluff-ified versions play off of the probably darker canon. If you write short-form porn, you can translate those skills to writing erotica, but it can be hard if you don’t write very specific kinks and chase market trends.


	8. Artists Aren't Safe, Actually!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: November 20, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189205428784/being-someone-who-has-had-my-art-pulled-from

> Anonymous asked: Being someone who has had my art pulled from online stores like RedBubble, I can tell you fan artists can and do get stuff taken down for copyright claims. I know folks who have been the target of actual lawsuits when they haven't complied as well... fic writers have more of a fandom history reason to be nervous I'd argue, but still...

How right you are.

There is, historically, a cultural difference in how we fans feel about art-for-pay vs. fic-for-pay. Disney’s lawyers, however, view us all as a sea of targets just waiting for their tender mercies.

The stuff that does not get taken down is probably:

  1. So visually different from the source you can barely tell what it is
  2. Lucky


	9. More on the Double Standard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: November 21, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189215508204/i-just-dont-think-its-fair-that-its-perfectly

> Anonymous asked: I just don't think it's fair that it's perfectly acceptable for fanartists to take commissions and sell prints, but as soon as fic writers do the same, we get flak for it. Keeping fic free to protect it is great in theory but in practice it leads to a huge devaluation of what we do - even in mainstream spaces people who can draw comic characters are seen as cool, but people who write fics about them are cringey. I'm sick of writers always being the butt of jokes in a way artists never have/will.

That issue extends far beyond profit. Our society sees art as mysterious magic and writing as something anyone can do.

The mainstream does see fic as cringey. This is because the mainstream sees anything where women’s ids are too obviously on display as cringey. Being able to profit would make it marginally more mainstream, but I doubt it would remove much of the “cringe”.

This kind of shit is why I will never pay for mainstream geek things like going to massive cons. I only go to tiny, fan-run things that focus on slash fandom or vidding fandom or whatever.


	10. Why giving the creator a cut won't solve things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: November 21, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189217015199/the-thing-is-people-make-and-sell-fanart-for
> 
> Someone suggested for-profit fan art paying royalties to the original creator. I was dubious.

I’d be okay with that in the hypothetical magical universe where the original creator got no say in what fanworks could exist and was never informed that all of those royalties were coming from noncon furry bondage porn or something.

In the real world, we’ve seen what a system like that looks like, and it was the atrocious Kindle Worlds. The whole LJ Smith situation there was interesting and, I suppose, a bright spot, but in general, that project was awful because:

  * It only included properties that were easy to license–so none of the big fandoms people really want to write in.
  * Amazon exclusivity, possibly with DRM.
  * Amazon sets the price (probably based on word count)
  * No “pornography,” which is not defined
  * No “offensive content,” said to include racial slurs and graphic violence but otherwise not defined
  * Amazon acquires global publication rights for the length of copyright
  * While the author retains copyright of original characters, settings, etc., they are licensed for use by other Kindle World’s authors, and the original copyright holder may use those elements with no further payment to the (fan) author.

They basically wanted very bland, sanitized fic, probably of canon het ships or gen, though the rules didn’t actually say that AFAIK.


	11. Buying our own webpages like it's the 90s

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: January 22, 2020.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/190400651904/back-to-the-internet-stone-age

> I get that participation in a fandom should ideally be free, but at this point I might just buy some web hosting. I throw money in some direction of my fandoms regardless, might as well let people get safe access to the occasional wang I draw. *sigh*

Yeah, that’s the route a lot of people ultimately take. It’s the only _really_ reliable one for vidders especially, given how fucktastically large all our files are these days. (Only 720p? Gasp! Injustice!)

I think our biggest problem is that we’ve gotten used to unlimited free posting of stuff that takes up a lot of space… except this unlimitedness is supported by venture capital and venture capital-driven sites inevitably go through The Tumblr Cycle™:

  1. Lure people in
  2. Try to monetize
  3. Definitely do NOT profit because you forgot to have an actual viable business plan, you idiot underpants gnomes!

Step 2 always involves trying to “sanitize” a site and/or completely change its culture. Boners and female gaze stuff are always the first to go.

Going back to paying for our damn hosting is probably the easiest way to avoid the VC issue. Though even paid hosting often has dumb policies about dicks.

Self hosting + AO3 embed or self hosting + ‘click here for the uncensored version’ tumblr post may be about as good as it gets right now. IDK.


End file.
